Karl’s musical journey started at the kitchen table in his native Dublin, Ireland, where he heard the voice of his mother, a professional singer. In 1976, at age 20, he emigrated from Dublin to Pittsburgh and ended up starting the avant garde/punk band Carsickness, which would prove to be influential on many others during the punk era. After spending the 1980s playing music, booking bands in Pittsburgh, and making experimental visual art, Karl and the collective of fellow musicians that had been Carsickness re-emerged as the Celtic rock band, Ploughman’s Lunch. The band’s 1993 debut garnered a Grammy nomination for its title track, “Whiskey in the Fields,” and they went on to play through the ‘90s, into the new century.

The 2000s saw Karl focusing on endeavors other than performing music. After spending some time in Philadelphia as a booking agent for World Cafe Live and a brief stint painting in an O Street Studio in Washington DC, Karl moved to the Berkshires of Massachusetts where he teaches art and continues his alternative approach to art, for example, painting around a roaring fire, or recording at the foot of a four poster bed.

Karl was inevitably drawn back into making music, in Pittsburgh and in his most recent home in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, with a number of bands and on his own. Then COVID hit.

“I just found myself alone, in the bedroom, with no audience—nothing. And I came up with a new way of writing songs that I hadn’t done before.” The ultimate result was his introspective new record, F EAR LES S.

His new approach to writing was influenced by his recording gear and location, as Karl explains in this Americana Rhythm interview: “With headphones on and using a condenser mic, it’s really, really intimate. You pick up your own breath…It becomes a different kind of performance. I just closed my eyes and wrote these really intimate, personal songs.” He also reveals that most of the songs on the album are “first takes,” so listeners will be experiencing an even more direct musical/emotional connection than one usually gets while listening to recorded music.

5 Pound Horse

Since they first galloped out of the Berkshires in January 2022, Five Pound Horse has kicked up dust in every in-the-know joint around town with their fiery blend of folk, rock, psychedelia, reggae, and global music. In a sea of sameness, the sound of Five Pound Horse is a one-of-a-kind cry from the hearts of five bohemians who have put audiences across the world under their spell.

Five Pound Horse began with a dynamic duo: When Karl Mullen, a musical poet raised in the pubs of Dublin and made in the clubs of Pittsburgh, met Benji Simmersbach, a globetrotting artist who settled down in North Adams, the rest was rock and roll. Both were punks in their day— Mullen was a member of legendary 1980s Pittsburgh band Carsickness (described by author Michael Chabon as “unaccountably stirring” and “omnivorous”), and Simmersbach had toured the world with A Subtle Plague, a community-driven band described in German Rolling Stone as “the Grateful Dead of the '90s.”  Together, they make up the songwriting force of Five Pound Horse, an ensemble soon enriched by three more merry musicians: Budapest-based guitarist Graigrai Simmersbach, percussionist Stan Parese, pedal steel and bass aficionado Josh Kleederman.

5 Pound Horse has created a regional and international buzz around electric live performances where anything’s on the table — French-language songs, banjos, marimbas, melodies from Africa and Ireland and anywhere else they draw inspiration. They’ve graced Berkshires institutions like The Dream Away Lodge and MASS MoCA’s FreshGrass Festival, appeared at Pittsburgh venues like the Thunderbird Music Hall and James Simon’s sculpture studio Pittsburgh PA, and thrown legendary parties at their home BarN in Williamstown, MA. The band are poised to record their first EP with producer Ronan Chris Murphy (King Crimson, etc).

Heart-stirring, original, and epiphany-inducing, Five Pound Horse is ready to ride into a town near you for a night to remember. Saddle up!

lily Goldberg - journalist / artist / chamelon